DHS Secretary Kelly: One Illegal Immigration Program Down, One To Go

Leftists today are cheering the Department of Homeland Security Secretary John Kelly’s memo that has announced the end of the Obama-advocated Deferred Action for Parents of Americans and Lawful Permanent Residents (DAPA) program that was one of the highlights of the Obama Legacy.  These Leftists who are excited today point to the fact that the DACA program, which is the children’s version of the DAPA, has been untouched.  They have taken this action to mean that, while the DAPA has been stricken from law, the DACA program will remain.

Some other Leftists have taken a different position and have realized with some dread that with the fall of DAPA, the DACA program may, in fact, be in legal jeopardy as well.

First, let’s look at why the DAPA program has failed the justice litmus test.  One of the paramount legal checks-and-balances procedures for any precedent-setting act, bill or law is that it is treated on a case-by-case basis and is not a blanket, overall coverage of any particular subject, be it amnesty, release of prisoners, deportation, extradition, etc.  The legal entity MUST VIEW ALL APPLICATIONS SEPARATELY in order to achieve these criteria.

Therefore, for DAPA, Democrats could not just give blanket protection to all illegal immigrant parents.  They had to prove, on a case-by-case basis that these individuals could, in fact, stay based on the separate criteria to determine their eligibility.  Just because one woman passes the test, doesn’t mean that another will.

In the case of DAPA, when it was challenged by the Trump administration through the DHS in court, a panel of three judges found that the department officials under the Obama administration did not, in fact, keep records of justification for the applications being processed.  For example, most of the applicants failed to fill in vital information, filled in information that was false, or filled in information incorrectly (in many cases, all three instances).  For these applications where information is missing, unavailable or misleading or false, the department would need separate documents that supported rejection of the applicant for the program, or that which supported a path forward with an explanation of why, despite the application being technically and legally incomplete.

In a footnote to the November 2015 judgment, the judges also noted that Obama’s deputies at DHS could not cite any members of the class who were denied the benefit once they filled out the form correctly, saying:

USCIS could not produce any applications that satisfied all of the criteria but were refused deferred action by an exercise of discretion… (“[A]ll were denied for failure to meet the criteria or ‘rejected’ for technical filing errors, errors in filling out the form or lying on the form, and failures to pay fees), or for fraud.”).” Given that the government offered no evidence as to the bases for other denials, it was not error―clear or otherwise―for the district court to conclude that DHS issued DACA denials under mechanical formulae.

Based on these checks-and-balances alone, the DAPA program was considered by these judges as “indefensible.”  They found that only a mere 5% of these incomplete applications had been denied.  That’s extremely troubling for a program that was supposed to be treated on a case-by-case basis.  Going by statistical probability, nearly 90% of the applications should have been rejected.  And this is exactly why judges agreed with the Trump administration and DHS Secretary Kelly and struck down the DAPA program.  This also follows the charges for decades that Leftists in the government were overlooking the law in order to process more illegals into the American system.

It is also the reason why Leftist organizations like the ACLU are sending up red flags to their activists to prepare for war.  They realize that the DAPA program failed precisely because of fraud and they know that the DACA program will follow suit.

Lorella Praeli, director of immigration policy and campaigns at the American Civil Liberties Union, had this reaction:

“The only certainty in Trump’s America is uncertainty – and no memoranda changes that. They’re trying to distract us with their back-and-forth on DACA as their mass deportation machine proceeds full speed ahead.”

For the DACA program, we are talking about nearly one million children whose applications were processed in a similar fashion.  Under the Obama administration, there was an attitude of doing everything below board without transparency.  For instance, if the Obama administration and DHS Director Jeh Johnson had put forward that they were allowing millions of applications into both the DAPA and DACA programs without proper vetting of individuals on a case-by-case basis, there would have been both a public and Congressional outcry.  Granted, on the part of the Congressional outcry, it would have been faux-outrage, because this is really what the Swamp wanted in the first place.  Regardless, the outcry and the approval for these programs would have been immense.  As it is, the only real opponents were those Tea Party, Constitutional, and consumer advocate groups who actually knew that the administration was lying about its procedures.

So, here we are now, with the DACA program very close on the heels of DAPA.  Despite the fact that there are investigations out the wazoo against Trump, from both the Left and the Right, he is moving forward with the Swamp draining.

Which has to be even more enraging to the Swamp and its denizens.

Source:  Breitbart

Image: DHS